TV cabling

[Martin Carroll]

Just about finished the roof of the extension on the renovation I am doing and my thoughts are turning towards the inside of the house.

I haven't really thought much about how the eventual purchasers will receive their TV signal, and how it will be distributed through the house.

Inside the house is back to brick walls in the original part of the house and obviously the extension as well.

I guess the easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to get a (digital) aerial installed and drop cable just into the living room (at both ends to give them a choice of positioning the TV).

The better(?) and certainly more expensive option is to cable up each room for TV and provide some sort of booster in the loft.

The Third (and probably least favoured) option is to get a Sky dish installed and cable up for that.

I had thought about taking the opportunity to run Cat5 (of some flavour) cable round the house but am shying away from this due to time and cost issues.

Any thoughts on this are gratefully welcomed.

Cheers

Martin

[Adrian C]

I'd just leave them an indoor TV aerial as a house warming present...

People have their own idea's now if it's going to be Aerial, Dish, Cable or IPTV.

[Adrian C]

Adrian C wrote: idea's now if it's going to be Aerial, Dish, Cable

My keyboard has emitted a stray apostrophe... :-(

[Pete Verdon]

I'd say to drop CT100 ("satellite grade" cable, but recommended even for terrestrial telly really) from the loft to a sensible place in each room. Don't bother connecting everything up - that can always be done later, but it'd be criminal to waste the opportunity of putting in some good cable runs. If you want to give them a start, connect the living-room cable (in the loft) to an aerial.

The cable can later be used with a booster in the loft, or connected to a dish, or used for distribution, or various other things. It's not "future proof", but it's a good start. Having two runs side-by-side to the main telly-place in the living room enables some other possibilities.

Pete

[EricP]

Thanks for this answer. I was pondering the same question as the OP.

Your answer about the CT100 was particularly useful.

[David Hansen]

On Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:58:15 +0100 someone who may be Martin Carroll wrote this:-

"Digital" aerials are something of a con. If I were you I would work out what transmitter(s) are available and what the signal strength is at the renovation and then get a suitable aerial from , see the "Our Aerial Recommendations" section part of the way down the page.

With the right aerial splitting the signal for two or more points is no great problem.

Getting the right signal level with the right aerial is far better then trying to boost a weak signal. Boosters boost noise as well as the signal.

A non $ky dish will get the same information from the same satellites and make it available to a receiver.

I suggest that you put conduit from the roof to points in the room, complete with draw strings. The points can be blanked off. Then things can be wired up as the occupants want. Some of the options include:

Some people recommend separate terrestrial and satellite cables to rooms (some "combiners" have introduced interference int he past).

Some people recommend combining terrestrial and satellite signals in one cable and decombining them at the point.

Some people think Cat 6 or whatever wiring is the future for all applications.

You cannot decide all this, but you can allow the occupants to do so.

[Roger Mills]

I suggest that you ask the question on uk.tech.digital-tv - where Bill Wright and others will probably come along with some useful advice. But

*don't* mention digital aerials - there aint no such thing!! I'm sure you really meant a high gain aerial with the appropriate channel coverage for all the analog and digital channels available in the locality.

[David Hansen]

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:59:37 +0100 someone who may be "Roger Mills" wrote this:-

Not even a high gain aerial, these are only necessary in areas of low signal strength. In areas of high signal strength there is a lot to say for log periodic aerials, which one seldom sees on houses .

At the moment the choice is complicated by the digital switchover dance. Currently many/most transmitters are transmitting some of the digital signals out of the band on which the analogue signals are transmitted and for which the current aerial should be designed. Thus, at the moment, a wideband aerial may be sensible in many cases. However, at digital switchover most of these transmitters will revert back to one band and a grouped aerial will then often be a better choice (particularly in weaker signal areas with band A transmitters, where wideband aerials have less gain). There are only a "dirty half dozen" transmitters which will remain with out of band transmissions at digital switchover, including the one my aerial is pointed at.

gives information if anyone is interested.

Of course this is "complicated", so I can understand why officials have encouraged people to think that everyone should have a wideband aerial.

[PCPaul]

'Digital aerials' are less of a con than 'digital headphones'. In a lot of areas aerials set up to receive the analogue signal will be completely the wrong band for digital, and saying 'you need a digital aerial' at least makes people aware that something probably needs to be done, even if those of us who understand words like wideband and polarisation can figure out if we need to change anything ourselves.

Having said that, I bought the £30 log-periodic aerial from Screwfix for our medium-low signal area and it is excellent.

It's nice and neat, with a built-in masthead amp (which is the only sane way to do it, if you've ever done noise calculations). I passively split the signal to three TVs and the freeview signal is 80%+ on all of them, in all weathers.